Why Do We Do What We do?

In my earlier blog I wanted to begin to expose the habitual nature of human behaviour. I am a long way from finished.

When it comes to individuals, there is often a question of nature or nurture, and the usual conclusion is that both are involved in who we are. I have long suspected that nature is very powerful.

The example I want to offer is that of my cousin Peter. He has been forewarned that I'm writing about him today, and he doesn't mind. Anyway, he and I are double cousins, because his father was my father's brother, and his mother was my mother's sister. Genetically we have the same DNA options as siblings.

We were raised differently in some ways. He was raised by two parents, and his mother was a traditional stay-at-home Mom. My father died young and I was raised by a working mother. He has two siblings, I have none.

As children we were close, but as we grew up our lives went the way lives do and we only heard about each other in news filtered through our mothers. Then the internet gave us the chance to reconnect and see where life had brought us.

They took very different routes. I won't dwell on the details, but I married young, it was very successful, and I am still happily married 32 years later, having raised a large family. His life has been very different.

So here we are, in our fifties, and what do we find?

First of all despite being raised by Christians, both of us have gone a very different route. While I am better defined as Pagan, and he identifies more as a Spiritualist with a Pagan flavour, we are both Tarot card readers and definitely not only not Christian, we are not mainstream ANYTHING. Not only have we gone the Pagan route we have avoided doing THAT in a "typical" way too.

Both of us write. That is to say we think of ourselves as writers. Neither is published, but both would like to be. I wonder who'll do it first.....

We both love Red Wine. We even share similar tastes in some of our favourites, J.P. Chenet to name one. We're also both rather fond of cheese.

But perhaps strangest of all, despite being of fully suburban origin, we both had the urge to move out into the country, and own farm property.

Where the bleep did all that come from?

Are those four things connected in and of themselves, and so one followed the other? Maybe, but why did two people whose only real connection was BLOOD end up living lifesyles with so much in common?

Why do we do what we do? How much is choice and how much is ancestry?